Computer networks are configurable according to several different models. In one model, a computer network has a plurality of communicatively interconnected components, or nodes, that are each capable of sending and receiving messages from one another. Such messages include information requests and/or data. Each component acts as a server and a client with respect to the other components.
The components may be fully interconnected such that each component has communication connections with all of the other components. A computer network of this design is particularly suited for using a multicast transmission protocol. In a multicast transmission protocol, message transmissions sourced by one node are communicated through the network to all other nodes.
Under certain undesirable circumstances, a node in a computer network may malfunction and erroneously fill the computer network communication channels with invalid or improper message transmissions. In other circumstances, a computer network's communication channels may be flooded with invalid or improper message transmissions originating from a hostile source outside the computer network. In either set of circumstances, a computer network typically acknowledges and attempts to process each message transmission as if it were valid. Considerable processing time and resources are wasted before the computer network discovers, if ever, the erroneous nature of the transmissions. Consequently, invalid message transmissions unnecessarily burden the processing resources of a computer network. This problem is magnified when a computer network uses a multicast transmission protocol because each node in such a computer network is individually burdened by processing the invalid transmissions.
Some systems attempt to address these problems by including a special code in each message transmission. The code is designed to verify that the message was generated by a valid node. However, hostile nodes analyzing valid message transmissions may identify the code portion of the message and simply copy the code into an invalid message, thus giving the message an appearance of validity. The invalid messages continue to present an unnecessary burden on the computer network's processing resources.